Lansing State Journal: Video gets teens on probation in trouble

Lansing State Journal: Video gets teens on probation in trouble

Video gets teens on probation in trouble
Drunken promgoers mock judge on Web despite his warning

Associated Press

TROY - A judge who sentenced three teens to probation for being drunk at their high school prom had them jailed after he saw them drinking and ridiculing him on a Web site one of them created.

"I told them, 'If you think this gives me any pleasure, you're wrong,' " Oakland County District Judge Michael Martone said after sentencing the last of the girls, Amanda Senopole, to 10 days in jail last week.

"You know, it's just a crying shame. I work my butt off trying to help kids like this, trying to figure out what works. And then they do things like this."
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Senopole and eight other Troy Athens High School students were caught drinking at their prom last May. They were arraigned before Martone on misdemeanor charges of being a minor in possession of alcohol.

Initial probation

Martone, who had appeared at Athens High days before the prom to warn graduating seniors against drinking, sentenced the students to probation, fines, court costs, community service and alcohol-education classes. As a condition of their probation, he ordered them not to drink and to avoid places where alcohol is served or consumed.

Several months later, Martone was looking on the Internet for a news release on one of the many alcohol prevention programs he has promoted during his 13 years on the bench. He entered his name into a search engine and came to a site belonging to Mary Meerschaert, one of the Athens students he had sentenced.

His computer screen showed Meerschaert, Senopole and some of the other students who had appeared before him in court - making obscene gestures, chugging shots of liqueur, posing with beer cans stacked nearly to the ceiling and vomiting into toilets.

The Web site's headline included an abbreviated obscenity directed toward the judge.

Meerschaert, now enrolled at Michigan State University, had used a digital camera to create an Internet photo gallery with students appearing passed out and couples playing a drinking game among its more than 400 images. Many of the picture captions were profane and directed at Martone.

Drinking at MSU

The gallery also showed Senopole, Meerschaert's roommate, and another co-defendant in the prom incident, Rachel Stesney - enrolled at the University of Detroit Mercy - drinking at parties at Michigan State.

"They made a mockery of the legal system," Martone told the Detroit Free Press. "I had to do something."

The judge showed the Web site to police and probation officers. It became legal evidence for charging the three women with contempt of court "for disobeying my direct order not to consume alcohol," Martone said.

Meerschaert and Stesney appeared before Martone on Dec. 23. Meerschaert admitted that her Web site uses profanity aimed at Martone, and that she had a drinking problem.

Holiday jail time

He sentenced her to 30 days in the Oakland County Jail, then sentenced Stesney to 15 days. They shared a cell during Christmas and New Year's Day.

Senopole appeared before Martone last week, telling him: "I have a new roommate now. She doesn't drink."

She also said she earned a 3.6 grade-point average in the fall at Michigan State, and pledged she would introduce her dormitory to an alcohol education program.

Martone doubled Senopole's hours of community service, to 100, but gave her less jail time than Meerschaert and Stesney - 10 days - and let her serve them one at a time, on weekends, "so it doesn't interrupt your studies."

Of the nine students who drank before the prom, two others also have served jail time for later alcohol infractions.

Parental reaction to the new sentences has been mixed, with Senopole's father, Tom, calling the judge "a fair man."

Their mistake was in putting a video of what they did online. His mistake is being an ageist asshat who enforces an unfair and unconstitutional age restriction.

SI.com - NFL - Pa. student humiliated over Broncos jersey - Tuesday January 24, 2006 12:30AM

SI.com - NFL - Pa. student humiliated over Broncos jersey - Tuesday January 24, 2006 12:30AM

BEAVER FALLS, Pa. (AP) -- A 17-year-old high school student said he was humiliated when a teacher made him sit on the floor during a midterm exam in his ethnicity class -- for wearing a Denver Broncos jersey.

The teacher, John Kelly, forced Joshua Vannoy to sit on the floor and take the test Friday -- two days before the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Broncos 34-17 in the AFC championship game. Kelly also made other students throw crumpled up paper at Vannoy, whom he called a "stinking Denver fan," Vannoy told The Associated Press on Monday...

Shit-can that teacher...

Create an e-annoyance, go to jail | Perspectives | CNET News.com

Create an e-annoyance, go to jail | Perspectives | CNET News.com

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.

It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.

This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.

"The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else."
It's illegal to annoy

A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. Here's the relevant language.

"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called "Preventing Cyberstalking." It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet "without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy."

To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.

The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.

There's an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an "interactive computer service" to cause someone "substantial emotional harm."

That kind of prohibition might make sense. But why should merely annoying someone be illegal?

There are perfectly legitimate reasons to set up a Web site or write something incendiary without telling everyone exactly who you are.
A law meant to annoy?
FAQ: The new 'annoy' law explained
A practical guide to the new federal law that aims to outlaw certain types of annoying Web sites and e-mail.

Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals.

In each of those three cases, someone's probably going to be annoyed. That's enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won't file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.)

Clinton Fein, a San Francisco resident who runs the Annoy.com site, says a feature permitting visitors to send obnoxious and profane postcards through e-mail could be imperiled.

"Who decides what's annoying? That's the ultimate question," Fein said. He added: "If you send an annoying message via the United States Post Office, do you have to reveal your identity?"

Fein once sued to overturn part of the Communications Decency Act that outlawed transmitting indecent material "with intent to annoy." But the courts ruled the law applied only to obscene material, so Annoy.com didn't have to worry.

"I'm certainly not going to close the site down," Fein said on Friday. "I would fight it on First Amendment grounds."

He's right. Our esteemed politicians can't seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else.

It even shields our right to do it anonymously. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended this principle magnificently in a 1995 case involving an Ohio woman who was punished for distributing anonymous political pamphlets.

If President Bush truly believed in the principle of limited government (it is in his official bio), he'd realize that the law he signed cannot be squared with the Constitution he swore to uphold.

And then he'd repeat what President Clinton did a decade ago when he felt compelled to sign a massive telecommunications law. Clinton realized that the section of the law punishing abortion-related material on the Internet was unconstitutional, and he directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.

Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans' personal freedoms. Now we'll see if the president rises to the occasion.

Hopefully this doesn't hold up against civil liberties lawsuits. What an atrocious abuse of people's rights to free speech.

Forgot What You Searched For? Google Didn't

Forgot What You Searched For? Google Didn't

The Justice Department may have done us all a big favor by issuing subpoenas to Internet search engines to find out what people are researching online.

Not because that data could help shield children from online porn, which was the government's stated goal in demanding data from Google and three other search firms.


Google refused to turn over search data, partly to avoid creating the perception that it would hand over more personal records if asked.
Google refused to turn over search data, partly to avoid creating the perception that it would hand over more personal records if asked. (By Clay Mclachlan -- Reuters)
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Rather, the request -- and Google's refusal to fork over its search data -- is putting a helpful public spotlight on the vast amount of personal information being stored, parsed and who knows what else by the Web services we increasingly rely on to manage our lives...

Think the stuff you search for in Google is private? Guess again folks! It's all saved on their servers. In the future, we can look forward to the feds crowbarring their way into our "private" Net lives.

The only thing I can suggest is the use of an anonymizing proxy.

Organic Consumers Association - Educating for Health, Justice, and Sustainability

Organic Consumers Association - Educating for Health, Justice, and Sustainability

ALERT: EPA TO ALLOW PESTICIDE TESTING ON ORPHANS & MENTALLY HANDICAPPED CHILDREN

NOTE: This alert is now closed. Public comment period to the EPA expired on December 12, 2005. Sign up on our email list here, and we will keep you posted on this issue. Thanks for your involvement.

Monday, January 16, 2006

EXPIRED ALERT TEXT: Public comments are now being accepted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on its newly proposed federal regulation regarding the testing of chemicals and pesticides on human subjects. On August 2, 2005, Congress had mandated the EPA create a rule that permanently bans chemical testing on pregnant women and children, without exception. But the EPA's newly proposed rule, is ridden with exceptions where chemical studies may be performed on children in certain situations like the following:

1. Children who "cannot be reasonably consulted," such as those that are mentally handicapped or orphaned newborns, may be tested on. With permission from the institution or guardian in charge of the individual, the child may be exposed to chemicals for the sake of research.
2. Parental consent forms are not necessary for testing on children who have been neglected or abused.
3. Chemical studies on any children outside of the U.S. are acceptable.

Send a letter to EPA here!

OCA's focal concerns with this proposed rule specifically involve the following portions of text within the EPA document (Read the full EPA proposed rule here: PDF --- HTML):

70 FR 53865 26.408(a) "The IRB (Independent Review Board) shall determine that adequate provisions are made for soliciting the assent of the children, when in the judgment of the IRB the children are capable of providing assent...If the IRB determines that the capability of some or all of the children is so limited that they cannot reasonably be consulted, the assent of the children is not a necessary condition for proceeding with the research. Even where the IRB determines that the subjects are capable of assenting, the IRB may still waive the assent requirement..."

(OCA NOTE: Under this clause, a mentally handicapped child or infant orphan could be tested on without assent. This violates the Nuremberg Code, an international treaty that mandates assent of test subjects is "absolutely essential," and that the test subject must have "legal capacity to give consent" and must be "so situated as to exercise free power of choice." This loophole in the rule must be completely removed.)

Sounds like what Mengele did to Jewish children during the Holocaust.

Homeland Security Opens Private Mail

MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary.

But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance.

Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal.
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“I had no idea (Homeland Security) would open personal letters,” Goodman told MSNBC.com in a phone interview. “That’s why I alerted the media. I thought it should be known publicly that this is going on,” he said. Goodman originally showed the letter to his own local newspaper, the Kansas-based Lawrence Journal-World.

“I was shocked and there was a certain degree of disbelief in the beginning,” Goodman said when he noticed the letter had been tampered with, adding that he felt his privacy had been invaded. “I think I must be under some kind of surveillance.”

Goodman is no stranger to mail snooping; as an officer during World War II he was responsible for reading all outgoing mail of the men in his command and censoring any passages that might provide clues as to his unit’s position. “But we didn’t do it as clumsily as they’ve done it, I can tell you that,” Goodman noted, with no small amount of irony in his voice. “Isn’t it funny that this doesn’t appear to be any kind of surreptitious effort here,” he said.

The letter comes from a retired Filipino history professor; Goodman declined to identify her. And although the Philippines is on the U.S. government’s radar screen as a potential spawning ground for Muslim-related terrorism, Goodman said his friend is a devout Catholic and not given to supporting such causes.

Click for related content

* Live Vote: Should U.S. be allowed to open private mail?
* Analysts: Bush spying rationale legally shaky
* Read more stories by Brock N. Meeks

A spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection division said he couldn’t speak directly to Goodman’s case but acknowledged that the agency can, will and does open mail coming to U.S. citizens that originates from a foreign country whenever it’s deemed necessary.

“All mail originating outside the United States Customs territory that is to be delivered inside the U.S. Customs territory is subject to Customs examination,” says the CBP Web site. That includes personal correspondence. “All mail means ‘all mail,’” said John Mohan, a CBP spokesman, emphasizing the point.

“This process isn’t something we’re trying to hide,” Mohan said, noting the wording on the agency’s Web site. “We’ve had this authority since before the Department of Homeland Security was created,” Mohan said.

However, Mohan declined to outline what criteria are used to determine when a piece of personal correspondence should be opened, but said, “obviously it’s a security-related criteria.”

Mohan also declined to say how often or in what volume CBP might be opening mail. “All I can really say is that Customs and Border Protection does undertake [opening mail] when it is determined to be necessary,” he said.

Look at all the privacy we get in this country! Haven't these fuckers ever heard of the Fourth Amendment?

Homeowner Shoots Alleged Intruders, Kills 2 - ClickonDetroit.com - MSNBC.com

Homeowner Shoots Alleged Intruders, Kills 2 - ClickonDetroit.com - MSNBC.com

Homeowner Shoots Alleged Intruders, Kills 2

Prosecutors will decide if the shootings of three men suspected of breaking into a Detroit home were crimes or self-defense. A homeowner shot and killed two of three men who allegedly tried to break into his east side home Thursday.

Police say three men, two adults and one juvenile, were breaking into multiple homes in the area. When they arrived at a home on Somerset, the homeowner was in the house and armed.

Investigators believe the man shot all three. Two of the men tried to get away in a car, but didn't get far before they died, Local 4 reported.

The 15-year-old teen stumbled away from the home and is in critical condition in St. John Hospital, according to Local 4.

Police are continuing the investigation.

Double tap, central mass! Neutralize the evil! That's the power of an armed citizen defending their own home! Don't wait for the cops to come. Just take out the trash!